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Video Game Reviews
By JEFF GUSSOW and SCOTT STEINLE Madden NFL 2003
John Madden may have moved to Monday Night Football, but as usual you can catch him on the annual rendition of his video game. The new version of Madden football is more player friendly, with additional modes for practicing your skills. For example, in minicamp, players can work on their techniques before playing real games. In this mode, you can travel to Jacksonville and work on staying in the pocket dodging defenders and making sure to hit the right target. You can travel to Buffalo and work on defending the air game or go down to New Orleans and work on breaking down the running game. By accomplishing the training in the camps, you earn points that you can turn in to get Madden cards (Current Players, Historic Players, Teams, Stadiums and cheats) that you can use during games to give an advantage. Another mode is Football 101. Here, Madden guides you step-by-step through any team's playbook. This is very useful if you don't know how a play is supposed to be run. This year's Madden lets you customize a game, setting the score, down, yards to go and timeouts so you can mimic any game that you saw on Sunday. Madden also puts the pressure on you this year with a two-minute drill. To add some realism to the game, players can challenge the call on the field. I'm not sure if they actually reverse any of the calls because none of my challenges was reversed. The additions to Madden NFL 2003 are great, and the combination of Al Michaels and Madden announcing make the game a lot of fun.
NFL Fever 2003
Microsoft's "Only on Xbox" premier football game returns for another season. Fever has practice sessions to help players learn how to do everything from stiff-arming a defender to making a spin move to practicing kickoffs. It will help anyone's game. One of the new features is My Plays, where you can put your favorite offensive and defensive plays. This way, instead of having to flip through the whole playbook to find that favorite blitz, you save time by putting those plays in an easily accessible area. While Fever and Madden are similar, I prefer a number of features in Madden. Madden looks crisper, and I like its announcers and game play. Starting in November, you can play Fever online with gamers around the world, as well as download rosters and stats to make playing more exciting. Before you go online, though, you may want to practice.
-- JEFF GUSSOW, Times correspondent+ Endgame
I think I've lost brain cells. Endgame is a sorry excuse for a first-person shooter. Set in the near future where virtual reality has become big business, it focuses on Eurodream Technologies, a company planning to use virtual reality technology for mind control. The plot line is horrid. The main characters and main ideas are introduced in the beginning, then the game goes on with virtually no plot developments for a very long time. The action consists primarily of shooting human targets that pop out from behind obstacles and barricades. The graphics are bad, too. They are blocky and unrealistic, more like old PlayStation 1 graphics. And the characters have stupid-sounding voices that make you want to turn the sound off on your TV. If you get this game, which I do not recommend, you may want to purchase a handheld gun. The gun makes the game easier to play but doesn't do much for the boredom.
-- SCOTT STEINLE, Times correspondent
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From Tech Times
From the AP |
